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10 metronews.ca
Thursday, October 25, 2012NEWS
Ricardo Reyes, left, enjoys some coffee and conversation with a regular Spanish
Speaking
Spanish at
home and
over coffee
Ricardo Reyes is one of a grow-
ing number of Calgarians who
speak Spanish as a mother
tongue.
Born in Mexico and now a
permanent Canadian resident,
Reyes lives in Calgary with his
wife and two-year-old daughter,
all of whom speak Spanish at
home.
Reyes also speaks fluent
English, a language he learned
in elementary school, and he
plans for his daughter, who was
born in Canada, to learn both
languages.
Spanish remains one of the
most common non-official lan-
guages in Calgary — and one of
the fastest-growing, according
to Statistics Canada.
In the 2011 census, Spanish
accounted for 7.3 per cent of
Calgarians’ non-official mother
tongues, up from 6.1 per cent
in the 2006 census.
That puts Spanish in fourth
place in the city, behind Pun-
jabi at 9.4 per cent, Tagalog (the
language spoken in the Philip-
pines) also at 9.4 per cent, and
the various Chinese languages
combined at 18.8 per cent.
Reyes said two of the largest
groups of Spanish speakers in
Calgary come from Mexico and
Venezuela.
When he joins a regular
Spanish meetup for coffee,
however, most of the group is
made up of Canadians looking
to expand their linguistic skills.
“A lot of people like Ricardo
and other natural Spanish-
speaking people who come,
come just to help us out,” said
Chris Macdonald, who joined
the group three years ago.
For Reyes, it’s not so much
about the language but the con-
versation.
“They are a very interesting
bunch to talk to,” he said.
The new bilingualism.
Immigration from Latin
America helps drive
Spanish as a mother
tongue in Calgary
ROBSON
FLETCHER
robson.fletcher@metronews.ca
‘Fully bicultural’
“I’ve seen children who
go to school here and
have Latin American
or Spanish-speaking
parents, and they learn
both languages so well.
They are fully bilingual,
fully bicultural, and it’s
really amazing.”
Ricardo Reyes on why he wants his
daughter to learn English and Spanish
City
317,000
The approximate number
of Calgarians who identi-
fied languages other than
English or French as their
mother tongue in the 2011
census. That’s up from
249,000 in the 2006 census,
representing an increase of
27 per cent.
Province
726,000
The approximate number
of Albertans who identi-
fied languages other than
English or French as their
mother tongue in the 2011
census. That’s up from
598,000 in the 2006 census,
representing an increase of
21 per cent.
Province
77.8%
The proportion of Alberta
residents who identified
English as their mother
tongue in the 2011 census.
That’s down from 79.6 per
cent in the 2006 census.
Province
15.2%
The increase in the num-
ber of Alberta residents
identifying French as their
mother tongue in the 2011
census compared to the
2006 census. That marks
the biggest proportional
increase of all provinces.
SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA ANALYST BRIGITTE CHAVEZ

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From saving for his
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To retiring on the course
11metronews.ca
Thursday, October 25, 2012 NEWS
meet-up group in Marda Loop on Tuesday.ROBSON FLETCHER/METRO
Rangeofexperiences.
Languageagenerational
thinginCalgary’s
Vietnamesecommunity
When Tu Nguyen came to Cal-
gary from Vietnam at the age
of 16, she spoke little English
and found learning the new
language difficult at first.
“A lot of the time you get
laughed at or you get people
asking you to repeat it a few
times,” she said. “That kind of
lowers your confidence.”
Now 27, Nguyen speaks
English fluently but still con-
verses in her mother tongue
with her family.
“Sometimes my brother
and I throw English words at
each other, just because it’s
easier to understand,” she
said.
Calgary is home to the
majority — 59 per cent — of
the 21,195 Albertans who
identified Vietnamese as their
mother tongue in the 2011
census.
Nguyen has observed that
language use within the lo-
cal Vietnamese community is
largely generational, however.
While her father speaks
little English and her mother
is taking a beginner’s class at
night, she said many of her
Vietnamese friends who came
to Canada at a young age or
were born here speak little or
no Vietnamese at all.
“With my friends, I actual-
ly speak English to them,” she
said. “I barely speak to them
in Vietnamese.”
ROBSON FLETCHER/METRO
Tu Nguyen finds English much more common among younger Vietnamese
people in Calgary. CONTRIBUTED
Calgary’sChineselanguageschangingwiththetimes
Next to English, the various
Chinese languages and dia-
lects, taken as a whole, form
the second-largest linguistic
group in Calgary, though that
is changing in several ways.
Mandarin, Cantonese and
“not otherwise specified”
Chinese languages combine
to make up 18.8 per cent of
non-official mother tongues
in the city, according to the
2011 census.
That’s actually down from
22.3 per cent in the 2006 cen-
sus, as other languages out-
side of English and French
have gained ground, propor-
tionally speaking.
The Chinese dialects in
Calgary are also changing,
said Samantha Yang, execu-
tive director of the Calgary
Chinese Cultural Centre.
Historically, Yang said
the Taishanese dialect was
dominant in the city, and its
roots can be traced right back
to Chinese labourers who
helped build Canada’s rail-
road in the 19th century.
In the 1970s, though, im-
migrants from Hong Kong led
to a rise in Cantonese in Cal-
gary, she said.
But that started changing
again in the early 2000s, Yang
said, as immigration from
mainland China grew, bring-
ing more Mandarin to the
city.
Mandarin is also a growing
language of commerce in Cal-
gary, Yang noted, and courses
in “business Mandarin” are
now being offered through
the cultural centre.
ROBSON FLETCHER/METRO
In numbers
-

3. 18 metronews.ca
Thursday, October 25, 2012NEWS
Bilingualism is surging in
Canada, but not necessarily
in the country’s two official
languages.
Statistics Canada released
the last batch of data from
the 2011 census on Wednes-
day, this time focusing on
about 200 languages that
make up the linguistic por-
trait of the country.
The data suggest that
multiculturalism is not sim-
ply an abstract concept to de-
scribe a motley collection of
diverse communities.
Rather, it is a reality for a
growing number of families,
even within the confines of
their own homes.
The census shows that
17.5 per cent of the popula-
tion — or 5.8 million indi-
viduals — speaks at least two
languages at home. That’s
up from the 14.2 per cent
of multilingual households
counted in the 2006 census,
and an increase of 1.3 million
people.
Of those 5.8 million, most
of them speak English plus
an immigrant language such
as Punjabi or Mandarin. Less
than a quarter — 1,387,190,
to be precise — are using
both French and English at
home.
And aboriginal languages
are in outright decline, with
usage shrinking 1.7 per cent
since 2006 — a loss of 3,620
people despite a concerted
effort by many First Nations
to revive their culture and
language.
“Yes, we see a diversity,
but what we see clearly is
... we have all these transi-
tion phases where English
and French are also spoken
at home in addition to non-
official languages,” said Jean-
Pierre Corbeil, the agency’s
lead analyst on the languages
part of the census.
“This doesn’t happen only
outside Quebec but in Que-
bec as well.”
Corbeil warned, however,
that the data likely under-
estimate the increase in
diversity over the past few
years. That’s because Statis-
tics Canada had to change
the way it collects language
data after Prime Minister
Stephen Harper scrapped the
long-form census in 2010.
Wednesday’s information
came from the mandatory
short form that went to every
household in Canada. In the
past, language was in the
long form that went to 20 per
cent of households, and was
framed in a different context.
The 2011 census numbers
suggest that language divers-
ity has been increasing at
just half the rate as noted
in the 2006 census, but data
from Citizenship and Immi-
gration Canada suggest the
pace of change is at least the
same, Corbeil said.
The census shows that the
most common immigrant
language in Canada was Pun-
jabi. When Punjabi speakers
are grouped together with
others who speak a closely
related language such as
Urdu, their numbers total
1,180,000.
Tagalog, the language of
Filipinos, saw the biggest
surge, growing by 64 per
cent since the last census
was taken in 2006.
THE CANADIAN PRESS
Bojan Djuricic and his wife, Naomi Sutorius-Lavoie, read a Serbian book to their daughter, Mila Sutorius-Djuricic, in Toronto on Oct. 17. Mila will be
taught to speak in English, French and Serbian. NATHAN DENETTE/THE CANADIAN PRESS
SPEAKING IN SEVERAL TONGUES
2011censusrevealsmoreCanadiansarespeakingatleasttwolanguagesathomecomparedto2006census;
PunjabiandTagalogaresurging,whileFrenchandaboriginallanguagesareonthedecline
Census highlights
Selected highlights from
Wednesday’s Statistics Can-
ada release of 2011 census
data, focused on language:
-
-
-

4. 19metronews.ca
Thursday, October 25, 2012 NEWS
According to Statistics Canada ...
1Up/down. More Canadians
speaking French
A sign on the wall of Stephane Wild’s restaurant in Winni-
peg on Oct. 5. Nearly 10 million people reported being able
to speak French in 2011, up slightly from 2006 but down as
a proportion of the Canadian population.
JOHN WOODS/THE CANADIAN PRESS
2Fading out. Just a few native
languages still going strong
A stop sign in Mohawk is seen on the Tyendinaga First Na-
tion reserve east of Belleville, Ont., on Oct. 11. Of the more
than 60 registered First Nation languages, only a relative
handful — such as Cree, Ojibway, Oji-Cree and Dene —
remain strong and viable. COLIN PERKEL/THE CANADIAN PRESS
3Climbing in numbers. Tagalog-
speaking population growing
Nearly 279,000 people reported speaking Philippine-based
Tagalog most often at home, compared with 170,000 in
2006, an increase of 64 per cent — the largest increase of
all the reported languages. JEFF HODSON/METRO IN VANCOUVER
1
2
3
From left, Kelly Kim, Peter P. and Leon Song practise French and English at a language exchange at the Rivoli
restaurant in Toronto on Oct. 10. AARON VINCENT ELKAIM/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Multiculturalism on display
in language-sharing groups
Not even the relentless throb
of a hip-hop beat can drown
out the sounds of a typical
Tuesday night upstairs at To-
ronto’s Rivoli nightclub.
The top floor of the bust-
ling bar echoes each week
with the staccato clack of Ger-
man consonants, the melodic
lilt of Japanese vowels and
persistent peals of laughter as
more than a hundred aspiring
language students struggle to
master their new tongues.
The students — from all
walks of life and ranging in
age from early 20s to late 70s
— are members of Toronto
Babel, an informal language
exchange program that has
been giving the city’s inter-
national community a chance
to speak in new and native
tongues alike for the past
three years.
The din of different lan-
guages is loudest in Toronto,
where 1.8 million people
reported speaking an immi-
grant language at home, ac-
cording to fresh 2011 census
numbers released Wednesday.
Vancouver ranked a distant
second with 711,515 people
reporting an at-home prefer-
ence for a language other than
English or French, Statistics
Canada reported.
Cantonese and Punjabi
ranked highest on the list of
languages in Toronto, along
with other Chinese languages,
Urdu, Tamil and Tagalog,
which originates in the Philip-
pines.
Eduardo Costa, 39, was re-
cruited in the group’s earliest
days after advertising online to
find an English conversation
partner. The initial group of
a dozen people quickly began
to grow, and Costa found the
people he met there began to
fill the void left by the friends
and relatives he left behind in
his home country of Brazil.
“When you immigrate, you
lose your family, your friends
are still there,” he says. “This
group became my first new
family in Canada.”
Smaller Babel groups have
sprung up in Ottawa and
Kitchener, Ont., Babel co-lead-
er Anna Shalaginova said.
THE CANADIAN PRESS
En français
Immersionstill
soughtafter
Immersion options in Can-
ada’s second official language
are broader than ever.
The original programs
have been expanded to ac-
commodate a wider range
of students, while a new
program specifically for kids
of francophone families is
now in high demand.
The idea has broad
national appeal, according to
figures from advocacy group
Canadian Parents for French,
which says more than 30
per cent of students in every
province outside of Quebec
were enrolled in some form
of French-as-a-second-lan-
guage program in the 2010-11
school year. THE CANADIAN PRESS